Hold the Fort
by thecivilunrest
Summary: "Boxes shouldn't be used for that." Collab with Cloaks and Daggers. For the ULTIMATE Collab Challenge.


**Disclaimer: **We don't own _Young Justice_.

**Prompt: **"Boxes shouldn't be used for that."

**Cloaks and Dagger's Notes: **Put two giggly fangirls in a googledocs chat and this is what we come up with. Was totally fun doing this with you, Asty :) And you're pretty darn brilliant yourself!

**Astoria Goode's Notes: **Cloaks, you are a genius. Enough said. So much fun, even though at the end there I thought we weren't going to make it, haha. But we pulled through! I recommend everyone doing this- and I also recommend finishing before the day after it's due. :)

**x.x.x**

**Hold the Fort**

A Collaboration Fic

By **Astoria Goode **and **Cloaks and Daggers**

**x.x.x**

"Whoa!" Wally exclaimed, walking into the Mount Justice common room one early Saturday afternoon. "What are all these for?"

Robin didn't bother peeling his eyes away from the game he was playing. He already knew what his friend was referring to; in fact, he would have been more worried if the speedster _hadn't _noticed.

"Miss M and Superboy had some new foodstuffs and furniture ordered in." The Boy Wonder gave a one shouldered shrug. "Guess they didn't have a chance to clean it all up yet."

Wally let out a low, appreciative whistle and put his hands on his hips, surveying the area with barely concealed awe. It was like the Great Cardboard Migration. There were boxes everywhere. Boxes stacked in corners, boxes stacked against the wall, boxes that were big, boxes that were small and even boxes with qualities that didn't rhyme with anything.

The speedster blinked and then beamed broadly. "Dude! This is amazing!"

The younger teen quirked a brow, fingers and thumbs still twiddling frantically with the buttons on the controller, his gaze still trained ahead. Given their short but nonetheless very active superhero tenure, Robin could think of at least a dozen more things that would deserve that level of enthusiasm-and none of them involved prefabricated paper products and the packaging industry.

"Right, amazing," he agreed unconvincingly. He tilted to the left, trying to see past the redhead that now zipped into his line of vision. "Mind getting out of the way?"

Wally shook his head. "I don't think you see what I'm saying here."

Robin gave a frustrated sigh and leaned in the opposite direction. The only thing he _was _able to see was one-third of the game screen and the light blue sleeve of his friend's loose, button-down shirt. "As a figure of speech or do you mean that literally?"

"Both." Wally stepped forward and plucked the controller straight out of the boy's hand.

"Hey! " Robin was immediately cross. He tried to swipe for it. "C'mon! I'm almost at the last level!"

"You can stop Bowser's insidious plot to capture Princess Peach later," Wally dismissed, holding the controller up in the air and tantalizingly out of reach. "Right now, we've got work to do!"

Work? On a Saturday afternoon? Prior to a mission? Robin blinked stupidly and turned his head to let his gaze follow Wally's blur across the room to where the redhead stopped before the largest stack of boxes. He wasn't actually volunteering to clean up, was he? Without being asked to?

The foiled video game effort immediately forgotten, the Boy Wonder sat up with his arms folded on top of the back-rest of the couch, the strange behavior of Wally West now aggregating his full attention. "All right, what gives?" he wanted to know.

"Seriously, Rob." Wally picked up a box and flipped it around in his hands, assessing it for its weight and hold. "You work with one of the greatest detectives of our time. You _really _don't have any idea of where I'm going with this?"

Well actually, Robin had plenty of ideas. KF wanting to mail himself somewhere in the Balkans certainly not the most far-fetched of the bunch. He wasn't going to take his chances with the wrong guess, however. The younger teen scratched his head and then shook it. "Not really, no."

Wally rolled his eyes. "A FORT, dude." He exclaimed, exasperated. "Let's build a FORT!"

It took a moment for the sheer genius of the proposition to sink in, but when it did, Robin's face (or at least the part that wasn't covered up by the wrap-around shades) immediately lit up.

"Dude!" he shouted "This _is_ amazing!"

"I know right?" Wally grinned, tossing him an empty box. The Boy Wonder vaulted over the couch with one hand, and caught the three-dimensional projectile on the landing. "Best part is building it. Where do you wanna start?"

x.x.x.x

Artemis couldn't wait to begin her television marathon. The gang recently got a subscription to Netflix, which meant that the archer would finally have the opportunity to see that new Ninja movie that everyone at school had been talking about. After suffering through a gruelling training session with Black Canary and completing a stack of algebra homework, a few hours of mindless entertainment without any justification for it was more than welcome.

Her blonde pony tail swaying behind her, Artemis rounded the next bend in the corridor towards the lounge area. She thought about what she was going to fix herself for a snack. She could smell some kind of baking coming in from the kitchen and figured that Megan was most likely experimenting with another new recipe. And unless the Idiot ate them (and there was only one person really deserving of that particular epithet), last time she checked there were also those butterscotch-macadamia cookies in the jar on the counter.

And those, with a tall glass of milk, only sounded too good.

Her mind made up, Artemis reached the kitchen doorway, only to stop dead in her tracks, all thoughts of movies, comfort food and curling up on the couch suddenly departing elsewhere.

"What the _hell _are you guys doing?"

Put simply, it was a tower of dull brown cardboard. In the middle of the room. With a mote of oblong Styrofoam shapes and stray packing peanuts littering the floor around it. Robin was carrying a box that was much bigger than himself and stacking it next to the existing structure. Wally, meanwhile, was on the opposite side of the room, busily constructing another box out of folded up corrugated board, a roll of duct-tape clenched between his teeth.

"Building a fort," the Boy Wonder said casually, as if it were the most normal thing for a pair of teenage, superhero side-kicks to be doing on a rainy Saturday afternoon. "Wanna join?"

Artemis glanced at the television. Then at the tower and the remaining boxes in the room, before her gaze settled on Batman's young protege once more. She was about to tell him, "no thanks," and that she wasn't "four," but Wally (unfortunately) took the obstruction out of his mouth and spoke first.

"Aw, dude. You're really not going to ruin this by inviting _her_, are you?"

The look on Wally's face made it absolutely clear that he didn't think she was good enough to join in on building their fort. Well screw _that._ He wasn't the boss of her! She put her hands on her hips and glared at her freckled nemesis.

"What?" she challenged. "Were you about hang up a sign, 'No Girls Allowed?" with a couple of the letters flipped backwards?"

"No," Wally said casually, admiring his handiwork on his finished box. "Girls are more than welcome. It's just gross things llike you that aren't." He nodded at the shorter boy. "Right, Rob?"

She couldn't be sure with the glasses covering his eyes, but Robin seemed like he had just rolled his eyes. He shook his head. "Dude, come on. It's not going to kill you to be near her for however long this is going to take."

"_Fine_." Wally sounded like he was getting talked into plunging his foot into a tub of acid instead of being asked to spend at least thirty minutes in close contact with a hot girl. Honestly, the more he acted like this. the more she wanted to stick around.

The speedster threw a box at the archer, which she deftly caught with a smirk, and the three of them set to work. For a minute the only sound in the room was the ripping of duct tape before

Robin cleared his throat spoke, obviously trying to ease the tension. "You know, I have a funny feeling we're forgetting something..."

x.x.x

The Martian girl had been certain she had set the kitchen timer. She remembered thinking about it, looking at it, and possibly even holding it in her hand. But it was really funny how the sight of a moodier than usual Kryptonian angrily shuffling into the room and kicking at packaging supplies could immediately cause her to place everything else on the back-burner.

Quite literally.

Of course, now that she had taken the time to investigate the source of Superboy's upset (Superman's impending visit, not because she asked him to help her organize their newly delivered house-wares, thank goodness) and subsequently offered her comfort and encouragement—she _knew _she forgot something.

"I hope they haven't burnt," Megan was telling Superboy as the two of them trailed their way back to the common-room. "I was hoping to make this my best batch yet. Do you mind if—"

She was rudely interrupted by the yelling coming from the common room. Artemis and Wally. Again.

"You are an _idiot_! My boxes were already here first. But then you had to go and knock over _my _boxes and now you think that this space is yours? I don't think so!"

"No, _clearly _Rob and I get this part of the room. You can take the kitchen!"

"Dude, don't drag me into this," the Boy Wonder muttered, walking over to where a very shocked Superboy and Megan were standing. But Wally and Artemis had ignored him, refusing to get out of each other's face for even just a second.

"Do we really want to know?" Superboy asked the younger teen. His blue eyes skipped over to the mess of boxes in the living room that he, only earlier today, had brought out after unpacking most of the supplies in his bedroom. To say that it was an... interesting arrangement would be putting it lightly.

Robin open the fridge door and took out a can of coke. "Well, we _were_ building a fort until Mr and Mrs. Belligerent Sexual Tension over there decided to air out their laundry again. "

Superboy blinked, confused. There was so many things he probably wanted to ask about that sentence, but instead, he said: "A... what?"

Meanwhile, Megan had busied herself with rescuing her cookies. Or what was left of them.

"Oh no!" She coughed, waving away a bloom of smoke as she opened up the oven. With the other hand, she directed the baking sheets out of the oven and floated them down on the counter. "_Hello, Megan_! Why can't I get these right?"

"Are those those the double-fudge walnut thingies you've been promising to make?" Robin suddenly appeared beside her, looking down at the display of baked goods.. Twenty-four lumps of neatly aligned, steaming coals seemed to be a more appropriate descriptor than 'cookie.' The Boy Wonder poked at one experimentally and then withdrew, exchanging an uncertain look with Superboy.

"I'm sure they're... fine," Superboy offered unconvincingly when he saw the Martian girl's shoulders slump.

Megan shook her head and looked at the cluttered counter top. Four trays of cookies. All gone to waste. "I guess I'll just make some more," she sighed.

"Fine, you can have your stupid boxes." Artemis was saying. She threw her hands up in the air, marching away from the speedster. "Go play hide and go screw yourself. I don't care—Hey Megan, hey Superboy."

"Hey Artemis," Megan smiled weakly, trying to stifle her disappointment over her ruined baking efforts to greet her friend. "Wally giving you trouble again?"

Artemis rolled her eyes. "I always wondered why people would want to bang their foreheads against brick walls. Dealing with something like _that_" —she tossed her head to indicate she meant Wally (when she really didn't need to)—"I can entirely sympathize."

She was about to reach for one of the chairs circling 'round the breakfast nook and pulled it out to sit down, but she was circumvented by a blur of soft blue, white and a shock of orange. In a flash, Wally was occupying the space.

"Hey, if you want to go ahead and do that, and possibly slip into a coma while you're at it, I'd say you'd be doing everyone a favour." He smirked at Artemis' venomous look before he wheeled 'round to turn his attention to Megan. "Hey gorgeous. Happy to report that your Prince now comes with a castle." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and waggled his eyebrows at her. "I call it _Fort Box_. What do you think?"

Robin let out a snort. "Dude, that's totally _lame._"

"Hey! You totally didn't think it was lame when I told you about it twenty minutes ago!"

"I was trying to be supportive."

Megan looked over to consider the living room again. All of the boxes that Superboy had been unpacking earlier were now dividing up the living space into what looked suspiciously like a pair of cardboard citadels sickling 'round the opposing walls. Other features of the room were also incorporated to embellish on these structures. Couches, chairs, blankets and pillows, and even the kitchen stools all made for a very strange cardboard castle-hybrid.

She supposed that this was this 'fort' that both Wally and Robin had been referring to. She didn't know what to make of it. Sometimes earthlings could be really strange. "It's... nice, Wally," she said, trying to be sincere.

"I know, right?" Wally grinned. "A couple more throw pillows and blankets, and it'll be a cozy little nook. You can come by and keep me company...OW!" His eyes suddenly narrowed at Artemis, rubbing his shoulder. "What's your problem?"

Artemis, who had since taken the alternative seat next to Wally, rolled her eyes. "If Megan wanted to be slobbered over, she'd get herself a Great Dane."

"Oh yeah? Why should she bother? She's already got _you._"

"Ugh!" Artemis flinched, her eyes flashing at the speedster. "Did you just _flick_ me?"

"Hey, you hit me first!"

"That's 'cause it was _deserved_!"

"Yeah, well, so was this!" He reached over again. Artemis jumped again and slapped his hand away.

"Ouch! Stop that!" She glared.

"Uh, guys..." Megan started to say, clearly seeing this was going to turn into another ugly argument very quickly. "Maybe we can just take a quick little time out and clean up before the league gets here..."

"Wait, that's tonight?" Robin's eyebrows shot up and out from behind his wrap-round shades. "Oh, carp. _Totally _forgot about that! Come on, guys, you can argue later..."

"You're absolutely right, Robin." Artemis stood up from her chair and looked down at Wally with great vehemence. "Arguing with this... thing is a useless waste of my time."

"This _thing_?" Wally shot up out of his seat too. "_You're_ the thing!"

"Yeah, great come back there." Artemis rolled her eyes. "Idiot," she threw back at him, turning to go.

And it might have all ended there if only Wally, in his anger, hadn't turned 'round and saw the burnt cookies on the counter. Megan didn't have to read his mind to know what he was contemplating in that split second. It was written all over his face.

"Wally, don't—!"

Artemis shoulders pinched behind her upon the crumbly impact. There was a long pause. Then, the blonde-archer whipped around.

"I am going to _murder _you!"

x.x.x

Kaldur was dead tired and hoping for a peaceful afternoon at Mount Justice. Some time with the team sitting around on the couch and talking, maybe watch a movie before Batman came in and briefed them on their mission or Black Canary coming in for training.

The Atlantean certainly was not expecting to see something similar to the teenage version World War III exploding in front of his eyes. Nor was he expecting to have to launch himself out of the way of a very fast moving Wally West.

He heard a muttered "Sorry," followed by a black lump that looked suspiciously like a burned cookie. Robin was cackling madly in the background.

It wasn't hard to put the pieces together when they were all right in front of him. In the kitchen Robin was throwing a burned lump—which from the baking sheet on the stove indicated that they had at one time most likely been cookie—at Superboy.

"Get him, Megan!" came Artemis' voice from the common room, which, Kaldur had missed because he was paying attention to the pandemonium in the kitchen, was filled with piles upon piles of boxes that weren't haphazardly arranged enough to simply be random.

"That's not fair!" Wally whined. He moved out of the way as a cookie flew at the spot where he had been previously before crumbling and making a dark mark on the floor where it landed. "You know I won't hit Megan!"

Kaldur could see a blonde head bob up and heard Megan's laughter. "Exactly. Strategy," the archer said before launching another charred mess Wally's way.

The speedster made his way back to Kaldur, who at this point just had his arms crossed over his chest as he tried to make sense of what was going on... and failed. "Kaldur, will you _please _join our side? We really, really, _really _need your help, especially because they have Mr. Krypton over there."

"Yeah, c'mon!" Robin urged, ducking out of the way of one of Superboy's missiles. "Join the dark side. We have cookies!"

"We all have cookies!" Artemis called from the common room before flinging the very object that she was talking about into the kitchen. It hit the Boy Wonder on the back of the head, which made the thirteen year old turn around and shake her fist at the blonde, who laughed.

"See? They're unsportsmanlike! _Please_?" Wally pleaded.

Kaldur paused for a moment, unsure of what it was that he wanted to say exactly, before just shaking his head. "I think that I am going to sit this one out."

"No! Because then we won't be even! And now that you're here we can be even! We need symmetry. _Please_?" The Atlantean just shook his head. "Fine," Wally huffed before disappearing to get more ammunition.

There was a thunk against his face, which came from a cookie that was obviously meant for Wally. He could hear Megan's horrified gasp and looked over to find her hand over her mouth. Without speaking Kaldur wiped off the black bits off his face. He wouldn't get in the middle of this, especially not with the League coming.

Back against the wall Kaldur just watched his teammates battle it out. Wally and Robin really did need the help, they were getting creamed not only because it was three against two but also because Wally refused to hit M'gann.

Somehow he also managed to get hit by stray cookies, though he was sure that those were from Wally who would send him beseeching looks whenever he ran past, which was quite often. Eventually, it just became too much. There were only so many times that a person could take a cookie to the face and be silent about it.

Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw Red Tornado, but when he turned to make sure, there wasn't anyone there. That was obviously his mind, trying to make him see things to make him stay out of this.

But then, against his better judgment...

"All right," he told Wally. "Let's bring them to an order!"

x.x.x.x

Chaos was reigning and Wally was supreme overlord. These cardboard boxes—they were manufactured to meet such a magnificent destiny! To withstand the onslaught of crumbly projectiles and to assist him in waging war against snarky, archer-replacements.

And now that Kaldur was on their side, Team Wally was totally winning. Crouching behind one of the towers of Fort Box, Wally grinned to himself when he heard a familiar, undignified squawk come from the other side of the room (obviously belonging to Artemis, because Megan was a lot cuter sounding on hit) after Kaldur launched his latest attack.

"I love the smell of burnt cookie in the morning!" The speedster cackled gleefully. When frenemies were being vanquished and card-board forts were being utilized, there was much joy to be had.

"Dude, it's more like oh-eighteen-hundred hours," Robin said from beside him. "And, P.S, we're running low on ammo."

"No problem, I'll just zip into the kitchen and grab some." Gleefully running into the kitchen and gathering as many cookies as he could into his hands and ran back into the common room. He tossed a few cookies to Robin and the Boy Wonder just left them to drop. "Hey, what gives?" Wally demanded.

But Robin wasn't looking at Wally. Instead he was looking at something behind the older boy's shoulders with an expression on his face that let Wally know that the thing behind him most likely wasn't something that would be too happy with what they were doing right now. The rest of the team looked like that as well, crumbled cookie remains at their sides.

Uh oh. This wasn't good.

When the speedster saw what exactly was behind him he was so surprised that he hopped backwards like a very fast jackrabbit on acid and on that journey he managed to knock over half the boxes that they had spent so long stacking.

It was half of the Justice League, and they were all staring back at him with blank looks on their faces.

x.x.x

Batman was watching the scene as though he couldn't decide between being incredulous or confused. Flash and Kid Flash were busy speeding around the room and collecting the left over material. Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl were helping Superboy and Aqualad stack the right-most tower, while Miss Martian and Martian Manhunter were levitating boxes over towards Artemis and Robin who were completing the opposite wall. Even Superman and Aquaman got involved, carefully re-constructing the cardboard cubes the Kryptonian clone had accidentally crushed in his enthusiasm. It was truly a sight to behold.

After all, it wasn't every day that you saw superheroes in full costume—whether they be adult or teenage—building a fort.

And not even a fort to protect anyone or anything. The fort they were building was made of cardboard, and was most likely going to be torn down and put away before the night was older. Honestly it was a bit ridiculous.

Arms over his chest Batman just shook his head. Who knew what was supposed to be a chance for the entire Justice League to meet their covert team, as well as giving them some advice and maybe getting some practice in if they could manage it. Instead it was like playtime at preschool all over again.

Except this time the building blocks were bigger and so were the people.

Red Tornado seemed to be the only member of the Justice League that remembered that they hadn't all been turned into four year olds.

"Boxes shouldn't be used for that," he commented to the Dark Knight, who couldn't seem to do anything other than shake his head again.

"Tell that to **them.**"

x.x.x.x

_End._

_Our first collaboration fic ever! Don't forget to leave us your thoughts. Please and thank you!_


End file.
